Productive Sunday

So last week I mentioned to Joey that we really need to organize the storage/laundry room in the basement.  I swear we have some "before" pictures somewhere but I can't find them at the moment.

Basically it's the back room, which is unfinished.  It's a large area where we threw all the boxes and packing materials from moving, about 15 rubber bins full of various junk, and a ton of construction materials including but not limited to: buckets of paint, brushes, tools, doors, screens, broken drywall, pieces of wood with nails sticking out, rotting wood from the bathroom, materials from tiling the floor, etc.  The water heater is back there, along with a big sink.

Oh, and it also houses the washer and dryer.  So every time I do laundry, I have to put on shoes because I'm standing in a hazard zone where there is dirt, sand, possibly nails and screws, and it's just not very romantic to do your laundry in the middle of a storage locker.  It even has the creepy one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling...

SO, on Sunday I decided to go down there with a trash bag and just start sorting through one or two of the bins.  I moved every year in college and after graduating college until we ended up at the apartment, and I had accumulated a lot of JUNK.  Combine that with me being a terrible packer (I just throw things in boxes), and you get about 15 boxes of crap, 75% of which is legit trash.

4 hours later, I had gone through all of the boxes, made Joey go through HIS boxes, and separated and labeled plastic bins for Fall, Halloween, Christmas (x2), Pirates, Disney, (<- yes, those get their own), Civil War Party, and 2 boxes of Junk that I couldn't bear to part with (such as the picture of me with the Chippendales in Vegas).  We had SO MUCH TRASH it was incredible.  We broke down about 10 boxes.  I swept up the floor (which hadn't been done.....ever), we put painting/construction materials on a shelf, and made plans to purchase a big throw rug, a table to fold clothes on, and maybe a nicer light so I don't feel like I'm in the Bates Motel down there.

These cell phone pics just don't do it justice, but I am really proud of our organization skills.  Next stop?  The garage.

~SG

It's sort of like a Pin Pic

Chalk this up to "things you don't really care about", however I do and this is my space.

Every day I find it cute and interesting to come home from work and see what kind of architectural marvels my Min Pins have created with the blankets. 

Yes, I can actually HEAR you rolling your eyes. 

The other day, I came home and noticed 3 different structures within the comforter and blanket, so I decided to document the intelligence of my canines.

Just your basic, average Pin Cave. (This one has collapsed a little bit.)

I thought it looked like an arm chair.

Personal bed space.

Doc is demonstrating how a Pin Cave works.

I'm sure you feel a little smarter after reading this.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

SG

Random Update (with partially-relevant pictures)

I know you may be thinking I've forgotten about this little blog, eh?
But in reality, I've been out of town the past two weekends in a row and that combined with Joey breaking my laptop has really put a damper on blogging possibilities.

If you are a twenty-something like me (at least for another year and a half!), you'll know that it's currently wedding season.  This year, we are involved with several weddings, and that means that crafting, planning, and traveling is now in full swing.

Two weeks ago, I went to New Jersey with some fellow bridesmaids to prepare for Jess and Ryan's wedding shower and other events. 

This past weekend, I was at my parent's house in PA for a close family friend's shower.

I barely took any pictures, [probably because I was busy pouring myself another glass of wine] and I really can't wait until people start posting pictures online so I can share them here.

However, I decided that a good post needs pictures, so I mustered up what I had on my phone and voila!  A few things to entertain you:

As if these need a caption. Best thing I've ever found at Walmart to date.

My soon-to-be SIL, Corinne, my sis, Laura, and me at the shower

Some light reading I found in my Mom's stash

My Goddaughter, Brooklyn. Not a cute pic of me but would you look at that face!!!

Bonus pin pic of her highness, Chloe Gish.

Hope everyone is having a good week!

~SG

Storm Chasers

Early this morning, a line of thunderstorms rolled in.  My alarm hadn't gone off yet, so I opened up the curtains and laid back down to watch the storm.  Hearing the curtains open, they suddenly emerged from beneath the covers.  I love how they aren't afraid of the thunder at all.  They are so curious about it.

I think I need to get one of those crazy cat lady perches for them to sit on so they can see out the window...

Leesylvania

As I mentioned previously, on Sunday we went to Leesylvania State Park for a nice little hike.  We chose a 2 mile trail called Lee's Woods Trail.  Here is the description from the website:

"Lee's Woods Trail

The Lee's Woods Trail Is a 1.96 mile moderate difficulty trail with a hard-packed dirt and rock dust surface and terraced steps which is accessible from the road near the entrance to the picnic area. This interpretive trail loops through historic ground including the sites of the homesteads of the Fairfax and Lee families, the Lee family cemetery and gardens, and Free Stone Point. As the trail loops out to Free Stone Point, you are walking the same ground where, General Robert E. Lee ordered the blockade of the Potomac during the Civil War hoping to cut off the North's water access to Washington D.C. Free Stone Point offered an elevated position where a battery of 32 pound cannons was positioned. At the point, you can see a cannon and imagine the deadly plunging fire the South could rain down upon approaching ships."

We happened to take the trail backwards, not that it really matters.  I snapped a bunch of pictures during the walk. It was definitely challenging at times- some of the hills were very steep.  If it had been a trail run it would have kicked my a$$. Luckily we were walking and taking in the sights, too.  On the way there, we stopped at Wawa and got lunch and I packed it into my little backpack so we could stop and eat if we got hungry.  We didn't end up stopping, but it was nice to have our food along with us.  I will definitely do this again, maybe on a different trail(s) next time!

First picture is one of the many bald eagles we saw.  He's that black/white spec in the middle of the pic ;)

This is all that remains of the Henry Fairfax house, which overlooked the river.  It's the chimney.  You can see both floors' fireplaces.  The artist's rendering of the house was really beautiful.  They were definitely rich.

Joey is walking in the grass:

The Fairfax house is to the right, and this is looking over the ridge onto the Potomac and also where the truck was parked:

One of my favorite stops on the trail is the Lee- Fairfax Cemetary.  If you read the below plaques, you will see that they know Henry and Elizabeth Fairfax are buried there within the fenced in area, and that Henry and Lucy Lee are buried somewhere around that area.  Creepy.

As you can see, the trail gets a little steep/rough.  Although I think this picture was taken when we realized we were no longer on the right trail....

One of the times I whipped out my camera for insurance purposes in case Joey fell while doing something stupid...

Hanging out in Lucy's gardens. Big tree fall hard.

You can see some of her Daffodils blooming in the background of the below picture.  It was really cool to think that they had been planted 300 years ago, and they still come back every year.  The forest has obviously grown up around the gardens since then, so there are random daffodils growing everywhere.  It was really obvious they were planted there on purpose:

Such a shame that someone in the 1950's authorized construction and ultimately, the demolition of the Lee home site.

All that remains are some stones from the foundation, marked by those signs.  In case you are confused, this in the house of Henry Lee II, whose son, Harry, was the father of Robert E. Lee, Civil War General.  So it's Bobby Lee's Granddaddy's house.

This was their front yard. How beautiful. They walked outside to this every day. The well was up on the right hand side of this picture. It is always hauntingly beautiful to walk on the same grounds as such significant people did hundreds of years ago.

AAANNNDDDD then we found a vine.

Luckily we survived hanging from a random vine and made it back to the Fairfax house, where we decided it was too windy to eat lunch by the water and headed home for Nascar.

I definitely recommend doing this or any of the trails in Leesylvania. It's $5 to get into the park and there are plenty of things to do and look at there.  Major bonus is it's 5 miles from our house.  Now we just need to get a boat............ ;)

~SG

A Lovely Spring Weekend- Updated!

Wow! It’s been a while since I had a really great weekend that I thought was worth writing about.  This past weekend took the cake.

I even took tons of pictures, however I can’t upload them at the moment because of a little incident that happened yesterday.  Of course when I am at work and I see two missed calls and a “call me” text, I worry that some catastrophe has happened. So when my darling husband told me he dropped the laptop and broke the screen I burst out laughing.  However it was no longer funny when I realized I couldn’t load my pics L  Lucky for all of you, I did take some pictures on my phone, so this post isn’t totally ruined.  I'll try to come back later to add more pictures. 

Friday I did a flex day at work- I left around noon and had zero plans.  I got Chik Fil A for lunch, went home to my pins, and (tried to) take a nap.  The weather was gorgeous so I sat out on the back porch while the dogs ran around the yard (well not the whole yard, just the fenced-in part).  Joey came home at the normal time, and by then we had decided to make plans with our friends Amanda and Ryan, and their two dogs.  Jax and Nyx are Thai Ridgebacks-beautiful dogs- one is an adult and one is a pup, and we weren’t really sure how they’d get along with the Min Pins.  Turned out they got along GREAT!

After nearly burning down the house with the fire pit (it was a liiiittle too windy), drinking beverages, ordering Chinese food (twice), and playing Disney Cranium, we called it a night.

Next morning, we decided to have a “nice little Saturday” and headed to Lowes where we bought a bunch of flowers, mulch and accessories for the yard.  We spent the majority of the day outside, planting night-shade violas, petunias, and FINALLY mulching around those damn trees out front where the burlap has been creeping through for the past two years and driving me NUTS.

We Joey also installed the under-window planters that we’ve desperately needed for so long- not because I really wanted under-window planters.  No, quite the opposite.  See, the idiots who lived in our home last, decided to install the brackets for THEIR under-window planters with drywall anchors, which basically ruined the siding on the house.  My choices were to have a) brackets sticking out of my siding b) huge holes in my siding c) new under-window planters with pretty flowers in them.  As you can imagine, I chose option C.

Saturday night we were hankerin for some crab legs, so we headed up to PJ Skidoos in Fairfax where we always get the crab legs appetizer as our meals.  In the worst possible turn of events, Skidoos had removed crab legs from their menu… THE DAY BEFORE.  Bummed is an understatement.  We decided to drown our sorrows in cider and headed home….

….on the way home, we stopped by and visited our old stomping grounds, The Mews.  Joey lived there in college and I spent quite a bit of time there myself.  Then, in a totally unforeseen turn of events, we somehow ended up at Patriots, probably the last remaining hole-in-the-wall dive bar in Fairfax.  We used to frequent this smoky, delightfully trashy joint for it’s $4 pitchers and bad karaoke singers.  Our friends Ryan and Jason met us there and we had a grand old time people watching and being thankful we’d all graduated and gotten good jobs.

The Mews

Patriots

Sunday we had a nice, relaxing morning. The weather was again, gorgeous, and we opened the back door, sipped coffee, and let the dogs run around.  Around 10 we headed over to Leesylvania Park, sans dogs, for a 2 mile hike through some beautiful historical sites.  We saw several bald eagles, climbed to the edge of the cliff, and swung from vines like Tarzan.  We saw the home site of Henry Lee II (Robert E. Lee’s Grandfather), his wife Lucy’s gardens (the daffodils STILL come back every year. She had a heck of a green thumb!), their front yard, the former home of the Fairfax Family (oh yes, they lived in Prince William County! SO THERE!), and some beautiful trees, wild flowers, and a lovely view of the Potomac River.

*I'm going to do an entirely separate post on this little outing.

Burial site of CAPT Henry Fairfax and his wife, Elizabeth. Henry Lee II and his wife Lucy are also buried on the premesis.

We came home to watch NASCAR and generally enjoyed a lazy Sunday which we ended by steaming crab legs (that I bought at the grocery store) 

What a wonderful, SPRINGY, weekend.  I’m looking forward to many more weekends like this in the future.  Hope you all had a GREAT weekend too!

~SG

Book and Wine Club

I don't think I ever told you guys that I joined a book club.

I know, totally suburban housewife of me, right??

But here's the thing, it's a book AND WINE club. So that makes it okay.

I was inspired by a couple New Year's Resolution posts to read more books.  I don't necessarily set resolutions for myself, but I do agree that I need to be reading more.  When my friend Christina set up a book club for wine lovers, I thought it was too fortuitous to ignore.  We also are choosing Virginia authors and Virginia wines, as homage to our "home state" *yes Mom, I know it's not my home state.

Our first book was The Merlot Murders, and we obviously paired it with Merlot for our first meeting at one of the girls' houses.

Our second book was Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl, so we decided to meet at a local Winery to celebrate the "farm" lifestyle and also pair our meeting with her beloved Chardonnay (and a lot of other wine...).

We met at local Paradise Springs Winery on Saturday, and took the $25 wine tour.  We were given access to the old cabin from the 1700s, had multiple photo shoots, witnessed a marriage proposal, drank wayyyy to much wine, ate a ton of cheese and crackers, and had more photo shoots.  Luckily, we weren't the most obnoxious ones.... It was a great time and I wanted to share some of it with you all.  I definitely recommend doing the tour if you go to this winery. I think the tour was a great way to learn about the history of the winery. Also the wine samples are very, very generous!

SO DRAMATIC

The room where the proposal happened.

 

Early 1700s Chandelier. That I LOVED.



Posing with the Staircase



Amanda is being dramatic with the wine barrels

Cheers!!!!

Our list of wines for the day

I thought it was cool that one barrel was pink.

The entire group.

If you want to read along, our next book is Sophie's Choice, or you can contact me to find out how to join our club! All are welcome!! :)

~SG